By: Harry Altham, Energy Analyst, Market Analysis EMEA & Asia
The oil complex has moved higher this morning following bullish DOE data, which showed a 1.02M bbl draw in oil inventories for the week leading up to 20th May – which rises to 6.99M bbl when we add in the draw from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Though there was a 1.66M bbl rise in diesel inventories, the NYM Heating Oil contract had made a full price recovery above $3.83/gallon within three hours of the data release and is now trading at a premium to gasoline, in which inventories fell by 0.5M bbl last week. The tightening of U.S. gasoline inventories has resulted in increasing imports from Europe, whose own inventories fell by 24.5% two weeks ago – in part because of those increased exports. We are expecting ARA region inventory data for last week to be released later today.
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